Unicode CLDR Project

News

What is CLDR?

The Unicode CLDR provides key building blocks for software to support the world's languages, with the largest and most extensive standard repository of locale data available. This data is used by a wide spectrum of companies for their software internationalization and localization, adapting software to the conventions of different languages for such common software tasks. It includes:

How to Contribute?

CLDR is a collaborative project, which benefits by having people join and contribute. Anyone can submit data to CLDR, and contribute to making their language usable in a wide variety of products (see Who uses CLDR?). For information on how to set up an account and contribute data, see Survey Tool.

Lessons Learned: How not to Represent Data in XML

There is a process for resolving conflicting data that depends on voting strength. Members of the Unicode consortium get increased voting strength, from liaison members up to full members. Full members can also participate in the technical committee, which is the ultimate arbiter for the structure and content of CLDR. For information about joining the Unicode Consortium, see Unicode Consortium.

How to Contribute Source Code?

How to Use?

Most developers will use CLDR indirectly, via a set of software libraries, such as ICU, Closure, or TwitterCLDR. These libraries typically compile the CLDR data into a format that is compact and easy for the library to load and use.

For those interested in the source CLDR data, it is available for each release in the XML format specified by LDML. There are also tools that will convert to JSON and POSIX format. For more information, see CLDR Releases/Downloads.

Acknowledgments

Many people have made significant contributions to CLDR and LDML; see the Acknowledgments page for a full listing.

Regular Semi-Annual Schedule

CLDR has the following schedule, with two cycles per year. There is a consistent release schedule each year so that implementations can plan ahead. The actual dates for each phase are somewhat adjusted for each release: in particular, the dates will usually fall on Wednesdays, and may change for holidays. The Q4-Q1 cycle usually focuses on tooling and bug fixes, and often has either no data submission or an abbreviated one.

The two important periods for translators are:

Submission: translators are asked to flesh out missing data, and check for consistency.

Vetting: translators are asked to review all changed or conflicted values, and reach consensus.